Top Microsoft execs, including Devices business chief (and former Nokia CEO) Stephen Elop and operating system group head Terry Myerson both indicated earlier this year that Microsoft was planning to put its muscle behind the Nokia X phones. The official line has been that these phones provide Microsoft with a gateway for potentially getting new users interested in Windows Phone.

One key -- if not the key -- to these Nokia Android phones is the set of Microsoft services that are preloaded and/or available for the devices.

Microsoft is making Windows available for zero dollars (a k a free) on phones and tablets with screen sizes of under nine inches. That means the company is counting less and less on the Windows operating system as a revenue source. Instead, services and applications are where Microsoft management are looking to earn money -- through ads, subscriptions, premium upgrades, etc. -- in the future.

Seen through that lens, the Nokia Android phones are vehicles for Microsoft's future revenue sources -- just as Windows Phones are -- now that the Windows Phone OS is free. That's why I bet there could be a generation three, four and more of Android-based phones in the pipeline from Microsoft.

2. Those who bought the first-generation Nokia X, X+ and XL devices won't be getting the updated version of the "X platform," which includes a new homescreen pane and other performance and UI updates. Microsoft is attributing this to incompatible hardware. Officials say more updates will still come to the first-generation Nokia X phones to improve users' experience, however.

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
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Disclosure

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.